Social interactions and recommendations like +1s on Google+, Facebook likes, comments, and shares, etc. are called social signals.
Google has been elevating the importance given to social signals as part of its ranking algorithm since late 2010.
Note: Google encourages businesses to build their brand on social media as a long-term investment to drive qualified traffic, instead of aiming for short-term benefits like search ranking placement. Google’s own head of its web spam team Matt Cutts has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social media, as so many things change quickly on social media. Without a reliable ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to social signals over other aspects of their search algorithm. In summary, Google’s strategy is a sensible one - “wait and see” how things develop over time, as sites that provide real value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google wants to display higher in its search results.
Social Signal Sources
Social media sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to when measuring social signals include:
With over 1.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most influential social media community on the planet. Research shows that an average post on Facebook can reach over 100,000 users, so even if no one is buying your products or services on Facebook, don’t be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google uses social data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems to have the most influence on website rankings of all social media sites, like Google+ or Twitter.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second biggest social media site in the world, with over 600 million tweets sent out each day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer online and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide great value to readers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google Plus
Google’s own social site naturally carries great authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are starting to interact socially on GooglePlus every day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big three social media giants listed above, there are a number of other social media networks that provide important social metrics, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
(A number of social sites provide important signals that can affect your search rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines include the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, likes, and comments a person has, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the number of people sending a tweet, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many followers on GooglePlus your site page has amassed, spread rate of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Digg, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related factors that can influence search traffic and rankings. These include positive and negative factors, such as backlinks from authority sites (not as relevant as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by other users [negative].
As a business owner, it’s important to not only grow your social media presence, but also to be able to track, measure and analyze social media in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into your brand’s online visibility on social media, identify market opportunities, take preventative measures if you detect negative comments or feedback by embittered customers, assess competitor activity and market dominance, and measure the impact of campaigns. It can also provide vital data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific brands, businesses, products, or topics.
As a tool for business intelligence, social monitoring is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by various groups that include marketing professionals, market researchers, digital reputation management (ORM) specialists, agencies, social engagement and community staff, and professional sales reps. Typically, smaller businesses don’t can’t afford to pay social media monitoring professionals to track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately a number of technology providers have developed many affordable tools that facilitate the active monitoring of a variety of social media channels, allowing companies to identify consumer behavior around their brands allowing them to react to conversations and engage with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have written a detailed article listing many social media tracking tools and technologies that you may want to check out. For more details, go here:
(Are you monitoring your social signals effectively?)
In this article, we explore a simple WordPress plugin for tracking social media signals and growing your social media influence online.
Presenting …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin
Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social media analytics plugin for WordPress that is designed to help you grow your social media influence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro measures and tracks how each signal is performing and returns either a green or red indicator. The site owner’s job is to change all the red squares into greens.
(Social Metrics Pro provides a system that any website owner can operate … simply turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that receive the most shares show up green. Posts with low social media activity display amber or red.
The plugin developers tested Social Metrics Pro on a network of 2,000+ websites over a period of 3 months. During this period, all they focused on was turning the “reds” to “greens” and then keeping everything “green”. From these tests, they noticed a 360% improvement in traffic for their top 10 performing sites, 410% more keywords ranked in the first page of Google and they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to the plugin developers, focusing on improving your social marketing campaigns can dramatically affect your search engine rankings, web traffic and revenue!)
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the benefits and advantages of using Social Metrics Pro to track Likes, Tweets, +1s, Pins and more directly from your WP Dashboard on your site:
Installation Is Easy And Fast
Social Metrics Pro installs just like every other plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s objective is to change all red squares into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social signals the way Google sees it so you know where to invest more effort and which campaigns need to be better optimized.
Track The Social Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro lets you monitor social activity from social networks like Google+, Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Digg, and LinkedIn directly from your WP dashboard.
Social Metrics Pro helps you get answers to questions like:
- Which social networks work best for my site?
- Which social campaigns are performing the best on these social networks?
- Which are my most popular posts?
- And more …
With SocialMetricsPro, all of this information is available on-demand, with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly tracks the sites that you care most about!)
Plugin Features
SocialMetricsPro provides many unique features to site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using external and built-in widgets. Access the latest stats right on your WP dashboard, display socially popular content on your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using widgets.
- One-click updating. You can update Social Metrics Pro in one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to receive email notifications whenever new plugin updates are released.
- Uses minimal hosting resources. Reporting is in seconds, using little hosting resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time it took to retrieve the information and the server memory used to compile the data.
Additional features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro allows you to sort and filter data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by post type, post authors, category, or publishing date.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export data to Excel for further analysis. Data can be exported in tab-delimited and comma-separated file formats, and imported to the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(Social Metrics Pro is simple to use … just convert more red squares into greens!)
Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials plugin customers have written about the Social Metrics Pro plugin:
“Social Metrics Pro is the essential plugin we use to monitor how our content performs on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It’s simple, neat and works precisely as you would expect it. When we work with our clients such as T-Mobile, the .Me domain name registry and others, Social Metrics Pro is the plugin we use to create reports as well as keep track on each bit of content to optimize it for future performance.” Ivan Brezak Brkan, Editor of Netokracija.com, TechCrunch EU Contributor
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”If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve.” Goes one of the most important sayings in business. And this is particularly true for tracking of your social mentions I found. There were two things that helped me a great deal to increase sharing after installing Social Metrics: First, I was able to see that some of my articles would perform much better on networks I wasn’t particularly using, such as StumbleUpon for example. Secondly, I could filter out the best performing content more easily and analyse what makes my readers share. Since then I have focused strongly on producing and replicating those posts that performed best.” Leo Widrich, Co-Founder of Buffer
Useful Tips
SocialMetricsPro comes with a step-by-step guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens).
SocialMetricsPro Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, full refund guarantee.
Software Pricing
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This lets you set up Social Metrics Pro on a single site. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site License – This edition lets you run SocialMetricsPro on all domains that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Pricing for the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing shown above was correct when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the product developer when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details:
Additional Info
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Our Recommendation
As mentioned earlier, with the increased importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google are now taking into account various social signals to help determine website ranking.
No website owner can afford to ignore the importance of social media. SocialMetricsPro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives users instant feedback on the success of their social marketing campaigns and guides them how to improve their results.
SocialMetricsPro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WordPress admin area.
We recommend Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to make social media marketing work for you.
For full details, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin
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